Africa’s
infrastructure deficit is rightly considered a top priority in unleashing the
continent’s economic, social and developmental potential. One statistic alone
illustrates the magnitude of the challenge that lies ahead: it will take Africa
until 2080 to achieve universal access to electricity at the present rate of
progress.

This was
revealed in the
Africa Progress Report released during this year’s World Economic Forum on
Africa in Cape Town, which singled out the energy crisis as the continent’s
most pressing challenge.
This challenge is framed not only in the context of
providing power to the more than 600 million people without access to it, but
the disastrous effects that unmitigated climate change will have on food
security, economic development and quality of life.

“Climate
change demands that we rethink the relationship between energy and
development,” Kofi Annan, chair of the Africa Progress Panel wrote in the
report’s foreword. “The carbon-intensive energy systems that drive our
economies have set us on a collision course with our planetary boundaries. We
can avoid that collision.

“African
nations do not have to lock into developing high-carbon, old technologies; we
can expand our power generation and achieve universal access to energy by
leapfrogging into new technologies that are transforming energy systems across
the world.”

Major conglomeratesIt is a view
shared by billion-dollar energy conglomerates such as the Swiss-headquartered corporation
ABB, which operates in more than 100 countries.

Leon Viljoen, Managing Director of ABB Southern Africa, said in an interview with Mail &
Guardian Africa
that reliable energy was certainly important in getting local
and regional economies to grow.

Mr Leon Viljen

One of the
keys to success in the renewable energy sector was the need for a solid
regulatory framework that provided certainty for all players, he said.

“In South
Africa, I think we did it right in the sense that we put the policies and
frameworks in place. A lot of other African countries are battling with that.
Also, renewables are an important source; you cannot supplement base stations with
renewables,” he said.

This is
demonstrated in South Africa’s renewable energy programme, which has added about 5.4GW power from renewable projects to the generation capacity over the past three years — about 10% of the
energy produced by Eskom’s mainly fossil-fuel generation.

Be that as it
may, ABB is seeing strong demand for its power engineering services on the
continent. The company has been active in Africa for more than 20 years, with
12 local offices south of the equator.

“From an ABB
perspective there is more of a focus on Africa because there is a lot more
political stability, there is a lot of finance flowing into Africa and
infrastructure development. For us, it’s interesting times and if I had a
choice of where I would like to lead an ABB country, it is definitely in
Africa.

Delayed but still on“All of the
sectors we play in are on the up. In mining, with the commodity prices being low,
there has been a lot of pullback, and together with the oil and gas sector
probably has the most challenges. But then again in both those sectors you
don’t invest in what is happening now; all decisions in those sectors are long-term
decisions. Things might be delayed, but they’re not cancelled.”

He said ABB
has seen strongest growth in basic infrastructure and transportation projects,
particularly in rail. Countries that are investing in rail infrastructure
included South Africa, Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique.

“We seeing
things picking up, and we’re seeing that in most of our offices in Southern
Africa,” he said.

He was also
upbeat on a coming together between the private and public sectors on resolving
infrastructure backlogs. Viljoen said that more open discussion and debate
would go a long way to overcoming the mistrust that was sometimes evident.

“It’s not an issue
of ‘us’ and ‘them’: we’re all in the same boat. So, let’s try and have good
debate and we can put new technologies on the table and [learn from] how things
have been done in other parts of the world. There must be some experience that
we can bring to the table to assist governments in solving problems they have.”

LocalisationOne of the
challenges for international players such as ABB is the requirement to fulfill
localisation demands. This is, understandably, a priority for countries that
wish to build local expertise and capacity in order to minimise reliance on
global suppliers.

Viljoen views
this requirement as one of the conditions of operating in Africa and is
pragmatic about its implementation. He said that nine of ABB’s 11 country
offices were led by local executives.

“If you see it
from our perspective, where it is a ticket to doing business you make it
happen,” he said. “No one says it is easy, we just need to do it. And that is
ABB’s philosophy wherever we work; I don’t see it as a big hurdle.”

What does
remain a hurdle is access to the right level of human resources. ABB undertakes
continuous training of its personnel. “One of the big areas of concern is the
competition for skills. In these countries there aren’t huge skills bases and
that is probably a bigger concern than competition for projects. We are always
looking at how we secure the skills base, and that might mean bringing in
additional people. So it’s a balancing act between overstaffing an office and
staffing it critically, so that if you lose a person or two you’re not in
trouble.”

This
particular challenge is one that is not likely to be resolved overnight,
especially given the rate of development required to tackle Africa’s
infrastructure backlog.

In many ways,
it mirrors the challenges and opportunities that infrastructure projects
present: much needs to be done, and can really only be done as a partnership — a
partnership between the public and private sectors, and international
organisations and local skills.